


But Still I'll Raise Your Flag

by tosca1390



Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is something of a mantle to pick up here, between Michael’s work and her father’s life. She does not think she wants it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Still I'll Raise Your Flag

**Author's Note:**

> AU from the end of S6.

*

 

Tel Aviv is blindingly blue, breeze hot and stiff. She sits outside alone, waiting for the cars. Guards hide at every soft point of the courtyard. She practically grew up in these buildings; it used to be a safe place for her, even more so than the house of her youth. Now she feels overexposed, unsettled. The airport, the plane, Washington; they are still too far away from her, and she has her father’s voice ratting between her ears. _Finish what Michael started_.

There is something of a mantle to pick up here, between Michael’s work and her father’s life. She does not think she wants it.

She wonders if there is anywhere she belongs, now.

Ziva senses him behind her before he says a word. Her back straightens, her shoulders tense.

“I’ll transfer.”

She glances behind her, pressing her chin to her shoulder. Tony stands a few paces away. He radiates tension, his jaw a hard tight line.

“What?” she asks flatly. She’s tired of him, of here, of Gibbs watching her as if she is a ticking bomb.

“I’ll transfer. You don’t trust me, fine. That’s your prerogative, Agent David,” he says, voice cool. “So I’ll transfer. You can stay with Gibbs.”

“You do not want that,” she says dismissively, rising and turning to face him fully. The sun is harsh on the lines of his face. He does not fit here. She does not, either.

He smirks slightly. There’s nothing warm in it. It looks wrong on his face. “Well, no. Of course I don’t. But I don’t want you here.”

“I am from here. This is home,” she says sharply.

“No. It isn’t, not anymore.” He walks right up to her, his good hand wrapping around her wrist. “If you stay here, you won’t come back, Ziva. And you’ll end up like Ari, like Michael. I can’t—I didn’t do this for that.”

“Then perhaps you should not have done it at all,” she snaps.

His gaze darkens and narrows. “So you’re pissed at me. I get that. Got it loud and clear from your gun in my chest. But that doesn’t mean you’re one of them.”

She recoils back, mouth curling downwards. His fingers fall from her skin. “You do not know me,” she says, the words ragged and harsh in the thick air.

Now he smiles, eyes crinkling. “We both know that’s not true.”

That cuts her nearly to the bone. She turns away from him, her hands clenched into fist. Fingernails cut into her palms.

“If you stay, you won’t come back,” he says again. His voice is soft, something aching in every word. “I can’t let that happen.”

She shuts her eyes, a hard lump forming at the base of her throat. The sun beats down on her shoulders, sweat curling down her spine.

“So I’ll transfer. I will. Anything. As long as you get on the damn plane today.”

“You think I will not?”

“I’ve known where this was going since we landed here yesterday,” he retorts. “I’m not stupid.”

There are cars in the distance approaching. She touches her pack at its place near her bench. Her gun rests at her hip, its heaviness on the bone telling.

“Ziva, _please_ —“

“DiNozzo. Grab your gear.”

Gibbs’ voice settles between them, cool and even. She glances back just for a moment.

Tony’s face settles into even lines, his gaze cool. “Got it, Boss,” he says after a beat, turning and stalking away from her.

She and Gibbs lock eyes for a moment. He is guarded, separate from her in a way he has not been with her since Ari. Then, he turns away and walks back to the entrance. She can see Vance in the lobby, watching. Always as she is in Israel, her father’s eyes weigh on her shoulders.

The weight of the choice hangs on her as they drive to the airport. This is where she picks sides and takes her final stand. The breeze is heavy, whipping her ponytail to one side as they step out from the car. Tony is first onto the plane, then Vance. Gibbs waits for her, face impassive.

Her fingers curl around her pack. The sun is too bright for her, here. It hides the shadows where her father’s secret machinations lay.

Without a second glance, she walks onto the plane, Gibbs on her heels.

*

“I’m sorry,” she says to Tony mid-way across the Atlantic. He has been studiously not looking at her, curling inwards and cradling his injured arm. Vance is asleep. Next to her, Gibbs has his eyes closed, but she knows he’s listening.

Tony meets her eyes, mouth pressed thinly. “Lack of trust does not a good team make, young padawan,” he drawls. “It’s time, anyway.”

There is a hard burn behind her eyes. She looks away, the breath catching in her chest.

They do not speak again for months.

*

Within a week of their return, Tony is transferred out of the country to NCIS-North Africa. There is a party on his last day; she does not attend. McGee and Abby think Vance is taking out Eli David’s anger on Tony. Ziva knows better. She and Gibbs do not say a word about it.

The new Tony is named Mark. He is also an ex-cop, from the Philadelphia area. Married with a child, he is funny, sharp, and blond. He fits well enough, and does not give McGee a hard time, or tease Ziva about the few-and-far-between English mistakes she makes.

It is not the same.

When she finally finds a new apartment (with McGee’s help), she has the team over for dinner. It is warm and a night of laughter; Mark’s wife brings a cherry pie and is liked by everyone. Still, when they leave, there is a hollowness in Ziva’s chest that she cannot combat or fill. She misses Tony like a limb.

She had mourned for Michael for a moment, but she _misses_ Tony every day.

*

“Are you angry with me?” she asks Gibbs once. It is early July, sweltering and humid in DC. They are at the office late working a case of two dead Navy officers connected with a rape in DC. The cops they talked to earlier remind her of Tony, and now he hangs over her as a ghost.

Gibbs glances at her, face placid. She wets her lips, her fingertips skimming her keyboard. “About Tony.”

He looks away, back to his computer. “DiNozzo made his choices. So did you. That’s that,” he says brusquely.

She looks back at her computer screen, cheeks hot with something like shame. She never brings it up again.

The next day, Michael’s case file appears on her desk, complete with Abby and McGee’s analyses and Tony’s report. She reads it in the men’s bathroom with the door locked for privacy.

Being wrong is something she is unused to. Michael’s treachery, her father’s puppetry, it stares her in the face. Manipulation of any kind sours with her. When Michael reappeared in her life, her gut had said no, but—after Jenny, after a summer apart and at home and back in the Mossad mindset, she had set it aside. She had thought Michael had her back.

Now, she knows better.

*

Chatter coming out of North Africa reaches her from both NCIS intel and Mossad. Terrorist camps, Marines disappearing; it sends shivers through the building. She shuts it out, for the most part. It is not her mission; it never was. If guilt creeps over her nightly, she ignores it. Tony keeps in touch with Abby, and McGee; they pass along hellos, but she gives nothing to pass back. The roundabout greetings stop near the end of July; she thinks he has given up.

She is not sure if she is relieved or upset.

In the middle of a hot August night, she wakes up drenched in sweat, swearing in Hebrew. Then, she reaches for her phone.

“When was the last time you heard from Tony?” she asks as soon as McGee picks up, the third time she calls his cell and skips the voicemail.

“Ziva?” he asks groggily after a pause.

“When?” she asks again.

McGee clears his throat. “I guess…well, maybe a week ago.”

“Is that normal?” she presses.

“What is this about?”

“Is it _normal_?”

The silence on the other end is telling and deadly. Her heart jams up in her throat. “He’s usually good about emailing or calling once or twice a week. But there’s been a lot of activity there, Ziva. I’m sure he’s just bu—“

She hangs up and crawls out of bed. It is the late morning in Tel Aviv. She cannot waste another moment.

*

Gibbs arrives at seven in the morning. She waits, seated at his desk, two cups of coffee in her system and dark circles under her eyes. Her fingers shake, her pulse jumpy; she has not felt this unsettled since a year before, the serial killer, _Gina_.

 _I was just gonna tousle your hair._

“Something the matter, David?” Gibbs asks, his hand curled like a vise around his coffee.

 _Sometimes, it makes you smile._

She stands and lays out paperwork in front of him. “Tony is in trouble,” she says, and watches as his gaze shifts, his mouth thins. But there is trust there, a recognizing of her for the first time in months.

It takes all of her powers of persuasion and a little bit of force, but she forces the story from Mossad and from NCIS-North Africa. Michael’s terror cell, located in Somalia, shifts and moves before her father could wipe them out. They infiltrate NCIS as fixers and supply runners. On a routine investigation four days ago, a car bomb was set off, killing two agents. Tony had also been in the car; he had not been found.

NCIS assumes him dead. Ziva does not think so.

“There is no body,” she says to Gibbs, moments later. It was just the two of them in Autopsy, cool blue light shadowing their faces. “No parts. NCIS is keeping it quiet, at Mossad’s request. Mossad is using Tony as bait to find the cell again.”

“Why would they keep Tony alive?” Gibbs asks. Spots of red flushed his face, the only visible sign of his anger.

“Information. Michael--he told me they were interested in NCIS. That is why he was using me, he wanted to know why. They are torturing him, Gibbs,” she said, her heart hammering in her chest.

With her help, McGee hacks into Michael’s files with Mossad, and found the last known cell location. Gibbs has words with Vance; she never finds out what words, exactly.

*

She is on a plane across the Atlantic once again.

Outfitted in loose sand camouflage, she picks at her gun, adjusts the placement of her knives on her body. She is nervous, tongue thick in her mouth and bile high in her throat.

“Do you think he’s alive?” McGee asks from across the aisle, over the rumble of the cargo plane’s engines. He sits next to Gibbs. She is alone on her bench.

Gibbs opens his eyes then, looking between them. She wets her lips and tucks her gun into its holster. “I hope so,” she says after a long moment.

Those are the last words they exchange before they land.

*

Sweat and blood slide down her temples. Sand grits itself into her eyes. She holds her gun out in front of her, alone in the corridor. Two dead lay behind her. Snipers are set up far enough away to detect notice. McGee and his back-up have not checked in for ten minutes.

The compound, sweltering and bright in the African sun, is too quiet.

Ahead of her, she can hear grunts, muffled by stone and wood. She hugs the wall and glides ahead, her feet silent on the stone floor. Sunlight creeps through the cracks in the door just head; shadows break up the beams on the floor.

She has three shots left.

 _Gibbs is out there, Gibbs has my back_ , she repeats to herself. The GPS in her boot is still working. He will know which window to aim for.

Swallowing hard, she shoots the lock on the door and kicks it open. She sees Tony, hanging by his wrists, surrounded by three men. Rage colors her gaze, and she shoots the one closest to her, a kill shot to the head.

The second rushes her; an arm swings out towards her, catching her in the stomach. Her gun falls from her grip. She rolls her shoulder and ducks, taking the body with her as a shield as shots ring out. The dark, dusty face above her shakes with bullets. Sound vacuums from the room; she cannot hear her own breathing, just the click of an empty chamber, yelling in Arabic.

She pushes off the body and goes for her gun, a tight roll. A knife slips from her wrist into her fingers; she tosses it across the room. It catches the tall tan man in the knee; he goes down mid-reload. A single shot rings out, breaking glass; then, there is silence.

Rising, she tucks her gun into her holster. Through the dust-and-sand-mottled sunlight, she halts, her chest caving in. “Tony,” she murmurs softly, moving towards him. She hears McGee, and heavy footsteps in the corridor.

His face is puffy with fresh bruises, some still red with impact. She grabs the chair in the corner and drags it over for him to stand on.

“There—there was some sort of truth serum,” he mutters, voice cracking and ragged. “They asked me—I had to—“

“We got them all,” she says softly, easing one arm from its bindings. His wrists are red and chafed.

His eyes focus on her then, startlingly dark. “What are you doing here?” he asks, coughing.

Behind her, McGee and Gibbs stomp in. “Jesus,” McGee whispers.

Gibbs is right there at Tony’s other side, cutting him down. McGee comes to her other side, and together, the three of them drag Tony out of the compound, and into the harsh sandy air.

Tony’s bruised and battered fingers curl into her ponytail, and tug faintly. She shuts her eyes against the tears building in her throat and turns her cheek to his bloodied shoulder, breathing in.

*

The medical wing in the Naval camp is quiet and dark when she finally goes to see Tony. She has spent hours in debriefing sessions, writing reports, and wondering. The cell is decimated. Mossad officers send their thanks, and she waves them off. They asked Tony what information he gave them, and NCIS is secured against the theoretical threat.

Gibbs and McGee are elsewhere. Ziva is alone in Tony’s room, her fingers scratching at her fresh cargos. She sits and watches him sleep, and wonders, _now what_?

“What are you doing here?”

Tony’s voice, like gravel, breaks the sterile silence. She looks up from her lap and drags her chair closer to his bedside. The legs scrape along the floor quietly. “Watching your back,” she says finally.

His mouth curls, lacking amusement. “Should have thought of that before you shipped me off to North Africa. Any chance you could have mentioned these were Rivkin’s terrorists? Because boy, they sure liked taking out their shit on me once they found out I knew you.”

Nausea curdles her stomach. “I did not _know_ ,” she whispers.

Something in his face softens. “It’s my fault anyway. I got curious. That never serves me well,” he says. His fingers flex on the white sheets. In the dim darkness, she can see blood and sand stuck under his nails.

Hesitantly, she covers his hand with hers. He is warm under her touch, and she is grateful. “You will come back, yes?”

“Am I allowed to?” he asks ragged, looking at her through purpling bruises and a swollen eye. She does not know the extent of his injuries, but she will; they will be her burden to bear, as Michael is his for her.

“I do not think Abby will let you out of her sight. Or that Gibbs will, either,” she says.

“But you—“

“I want you home,” she cuts in, dragging her fingertips across his wrist.

He shuts his eyes, breathing shallowly. “It is a little hot here for my tastes,” he cracks out, half a smile curving his mouth.

There is something settling between them, tentative and fragile. But it is there. “It will be nice, to have you back.”

“Will it?” he asks dryly. His voice strains with effort. He is weary, but she has missed the sound of his voice for these months. “What about that whole not trusting me thing? Still on that?”

She wets her lips. “You did not trust me at first. Because of Ari, and what he did to Kate. But you grew to, yes?”

“Yes,” he says, low and rough. “You know I did.”

“Then perhaps we can start from there once more,” she says, her stomach in knots and her heart pressed in her chest as a vise.

He watches her carefully, jaw still clenched under his skin. “It’s your call. It always has been,” he says.

 _No_ , she wants to say. _We have both missed the windows, time after time_.

She does not, though. Instead, she settles back in her chair, eyes still fixed on him. “The devil you know is better than the one you do not—that is the saying, yes?”

“Yes,” he says. “Got one right.”

“Then I would like the devil I know. I would like you,” she says simply.

His smile is brief, too small for his face. But it is there. Her fingers remain curled over his.

Somehow, perhaps, it will be enough.

*


End file.
